Harvesting Gold Nanoparticles WIth Alfalfa Plants

Posted by timothy on Tuesday August 20, 2002 @08:29AM from the buckwheat's-next dept.

Rocky Mudbutt writes: "An international research team from the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) and Mexico advanced the work at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL). Ordinary alfalfa plants are being used as miniature gold factories that one day could provide the nanotechnology industry with a continuous harvest of gold nanoparticles. Alfalfa extracts gold from the medium and stores it in the form of nanoparticles -- specks of gold less than a billionth of a meter across according to a press release from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center."

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Remember the saying... by soulcuttr · 2002-08-20 09:41 · Score: 2, Interesting

"Money doesn't grow on trees"... but it DOES grow on alfalfa apparently.

I'm curious to know if this is a property specific to alfalfa, or if other plants have the same propensity towards extracting metals from the medium in which they grow. I could be living on property that's 'green gold' (if only I put all my grass clippings through extensive centrifuging).

-Sou|cuttr